The direct conversion of solar energy to electricity is a technology which holds great promise for contributing to the solution of future global energy needs. However, currently, the technology has neither reached the efficiency nor reduction in cost necessary to contribute significantly as a source of energy on a large scale. The most effective route to realization of large scale solar energy conversion is to find vastly improved materials from which the necessary devices may be fabricated. Typically, these materials may either (a) convert light to electricity with greatly improved efficiency or (b) greatly reduce the cost of device fabrication, or both.
Although solar energy holds great promise as a source of power for the future, major advances in materials development must be made. While some advances in solar cell efficiencies have been made in the last few decades, new materials that offer superior efficiencies could offer the boost needed to make photovoltaics a global widespread source of energy. Also, the high costs of producing solar cells are a significant barrier to the widespread use of photovoltaic energy conversion.
The direct conversion of heat to electricity through thermoelectric power generation also holds great promise for lightening the burdens of increasing energy needs. However, the materials utilized by this technology are the limiting factor in achieving higher efficiencies. A material's usefulness as a thermoelectric is measured by its dimensionless figure of merit ZT. Current state of the art thermoelectric materials possess ZT between 1 and 1.5. Though many advances have been made in recent years, the current values of ZT are still too low for use in large-scale power generation and/or refrigeration.
Thus, a need exists in the art for new materials for use in the direct conversion of solar and heat energy to electricity.